


Let Me Hold It Lightly

by vargrimar



Series: The Chambers and the Valves [16]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Canon Compliant, Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Introspection, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 04, Survivor Guilt, spoilers: it's mary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vargrimar/pseuds/vargrimar
Summary: Whether their collective silence is out of respect for the dead or out of sheer disbelief, he doesn’t know, but a part of him wishes someone would talk, wishes someone,anyonewould take charge, begin damage control, because the quiet is hateful and the low hum of the tanks and the gliding movements of the water are the sole sounds that backdrop the quaking cadence of his own heart—and he cannot bear to hear its incessant thunder.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: The Chambers and the Valves [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640680
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Let Me Hold It Lightly

**Author's Note:**

> ( and how does it feel  
> now you've scratched that itch?  
> how does it feel?
> 
> pulled out all your stitches . . .
> 
> hubris is a bitch. )

It should have been me.

That is the thought that ricochets in endless diagonals and scatter-shot vertices against the inner spaces of his skull. It imbues the milliseconds, saturates the air, bleeds through his cells like osmosis. It is desperation in perpetual reprise: it should have been me, it should have been me, it should have been me, it should have been me.

Sherlock stands amongst the sharks in the watery-blue ambiance of London Aquarium, statue-still and adrenaline sick, watching John curl himself against the limp figure of his murdered wife. The blood at Mary’s ribs is slick and black in the light; it coats Sherlock’s left glove, smeared, settling between the stitches as the burn of copper and gunpowder skims the edge of every inhale. Her face had been tight with agony only moments ago, but now the muscles have relaxed into neutrality. Her brain has already begun its shutdown; her heart has ceased to beat. The woman in John’s arms is Mary Watson in name alone.

It should have been me, comes the thought. It should have been me. It should have been me. It should have been me.

He takes two heavy steps toward Mary, toward John. His legs feel leaden and cemented to the ground, but he persists. He just can’t stand there and do nothing. He can’t. Not when John is like this. Not when John is anguished and bereaved. Not when John’s body language could write a study in sorrow. Not when John is _crying_.

Another step, and he reaches out for John’s shoulder.

The murderous look he receives in return makes him retreat.

John’s eyes have always been blue, but in the aquarium’s azure atmosphere, they have grown cold and dark. They are cooler than cobalt, deeper than delft; an empty midnight resides there, as if the stars that had once glittered through his night’s sky have all been snuffed out with the gust of one final, entropic breath. No light remains.

Sherlock never knew a colour could look so violent.

“Don’t you dare,” says John. Venom coats every rigid, glass-cut word. They are delivered with such sharpness, such animosity, that they sound like they should be said in another time, another place, like they should be a threat for a cornered criminal and not a years-long friend.

Everything under Sherlock’s sternum jerks in a sharp twist. His steps fall backward, ushering distance between himself, John, and Mary. Words clutter pell-mell in his throat, but he can’t seem to sort them into sentences; they swarm and scatter when he tries to pick them apart. His mouth opens, yet air is the only thing that glides through.

“You made a vow,” John breathes. His eyes have pinned Sherlock to the spot. They strip, flay, vivisect. “You _swore_ it.”

Sherlock can do nothing but stare.

Because he’s right. John is right. Sherlock had vowed to be there for all three Watsons. He’d vowed to be there always, to protect John’s family no matter the circumstances, and he’d failed.

From the very moment he saw Vivian Norbury sitting on the aquarium bench, small and unassuming in her age, he should have accounted for this. He should have known better. He should have seen, should have anticipated, should have thrust Mary away so he could accept his fate, but instead he’d pressed onward, negligent in his own sodding arrogance, and now she lies dead because he did not _observe_.

Sherlock has cheated death countless times before. He has witnessed it countless more. He has been the one to cause it, ensure it, deny it, and he has even been the one to deliver it, bursting from the end of John’s SIG Sauer in a splinter of skull fragments and brain matter. Death has courted him for years, skirting the edges of his periphery like a displaced shadow, slinking close enough for him to hear the susurrus of its footsteps and the wisp of its breath, but never has it laid claim to a soul he has sworn to protect.

If he’d shoved her aside, let the shot pierce him through, kept her safe as promised, would he have survived? It isn’t likely, but—God, it’s a chance he still would have taken. He’s already survived one bullet to the chest; what’s one more? He’s got a frame of reference, an incident for comparison, a grand scope in which to suffer, and if he were to meet his mortality in London Aquarium, if this watery grave were to be his Samarra, he would have been prepared. Willing. Ready.

Slowly, Sherlock takes another step backward. Away from John, away from Mary. Not even the urge to rub his fingers or press his hands together can plunge through the shock.

He watches John press his cheek into the blond of Mary’s hair, blood-tinged hand framing her face, and finds his throat so tight he can barely swallow. He aches to kneel with them both; he wants to enfold John in his arms and tell him he’s sorry, this is not how it should have been, he’s sorry, he doesn’t know what to do, he’s sorry, he never meant for this, he’s sorry, this is not how this encounter was supposed to go—

It should have been me, comes the ricochet. It should have been me. It should have been me.

Crunched between the bench and his departed wife, John seems to erode. He hunches further inward, body compacted into a mere fraction of his height, his arm encircling Mary as if he might somehow shield her from the inevitable. His face tenses and his shoulders shiver. Every fault line within him fractures open, creasing with grief, and magma-thick misery wells up from down beneath.

The weight of every gaze in the room is palpable. It is constant, crushing, compelled by the continual currents of gravitons. Mycroft, Lestrade, remaining officers from the Met—their stares cut from him to John to Mary, one after the other, and each feels like a fire-hot poker pressing into Sherlock’s skin: the burn of a cigarette against his arm, the sweep of cinders spread across his scars.

Whether their collective silence is out of respect for the dead or out of sheer disbelief, he doesn’t know, but a part of him wishes someone would talk, wishes someone, _anyone_ would take charge, begin damage control, because the quiet is hateful and the low hum of the tanks and the gliding movements of the water are the sole sounds that backdrop the quaking cadence of his own heart—and he cannot bear to hear its incessant thunder.

It should have been me, comes the echo. It should have been me.

Sherlock shrinks back another step, small and exposed and utterly powerless. Adrenaline still threads through his veins, floods his nervous system, adheres tremors to his bones with every systole, and yet all conceivable outlets remain forbidden. He can’t pace, he can’t run, he can’t rock, he can’t shout, he can’t cry. There is so much pulling and pushing within that the writhing plexus of it all leaves him in stagnant deadlock. The Earth has paused on its axis, suspended in a horribly vacant pocket outside the cosmos, and there is nothing he can do to set it right.

Perhaps in some other universe, in some other assortment of misplaced stardust, in some other aftermath of smouldering supernovas, this series of events would have never come to pass. In another collection of clustered constellations beyond singularities and suns and solar nebulas, John would never have had to see Mary’s life slip away. In another outcome contrived by another set of variables misaligned and realigned into another apogee entirely, Sherlock might have had the privilege to die in John’s arms.

Because Sherlock has leapt from a building for John. He has gone undercover, destroyed a criminal network, withstood brutal floggings for John. He has suffered rebirth, chased life, and even cheated death for John. Dying for him would have just been one step further.

Sherlock swallows, retreating one heel at a time.

It should have been me, comes the guilt.

God, it should have been me.

John, I—

I’m so very sorry it wasn’t.


End file.
